Doc Savage - The Derrick Devil Part 1

THE DERRICK DEVIL.

A Doc Savage Adventure.

By Kenneth Robeson.

Chapter I. THE FLOWING RED DEVIL.

THE man carried a .30-30 rifle in one hand and two boxes of cartridges, both open, in the other hand. He acted as if ready to drop the cartridges and use the rifle any instant.

The girl had a shotgun.

"I've got a hunch guns ain't a lot of good against this thing!" the man muttered.

"What's the matter, Reservoir?" the girl asked. "Believe in hobgoblins?"

It was too dark to tell much about them, only that the man was tall and skinny, except for his middle, which was big around, making him like a snake that had swallowed an egg. A nice snake, of course.

The girl was about the right size, and if she didn't have a good form, the darkness lied. It was impossible to tell about her coloring.

"I still maintain I saw something coming out of the casing of that wildcat well, Miss Vida," the man muttered.

"Reservoir Hill may be old, but he ain't going nuts!"The girl laughed. It was, somehow, not a very enthusiastic mirth.

"Sam Sands was to watch the well until midnight," she said. "It's eleven. Time you and I were relieving Sam."

Holding the rifle with his finger in the trigger guard, the man shuffled off. The girl took long strides and kept at his side.

Tall, dry gra.s.s brushed their field boots. Leaves of scrub oak rustled in the night breeze. Over in the hills somewhere, an owl was making a racket.

They topped the small hill and before them the spidery thin pyramid of an oil well derrick stood reared against the cloudy night sky. A modern pipe derrick, and the drilling rig was evidently a rotary.

The well was not a producer, because the breeze was coming from that direction and it carried, instead of the smell of crude oil, the odors usually found around drilling wells.

"Reservoir" Hill stopped.

The girl waited, but when he did not move or speak, she grew impatient. "Well!"

"We've got the wildcat shut down because our boss driller has disappeared," Reservoir Hill said, slowly.

"Well?" the girl said again, sharply.

"I've got a horrible suspicion," continued Reservoir Hill, "that we've already found our driller!"

THE girl was puzzled. She held her shotgun in the crook of her elbow and eyed her companion. A stray beam of moonlight came through a crack in pa.s.sing clouds to illuminate the man. He looked as if the ends of him had been squeezed to make him big in the middle.

"What are you driving at, Reservoir?"

"Remember that gummy stuff we found in the gully below the drilling rig? It was near where we found the clothes our driller was wearin'-when he-well, when he disappeared."

"That was just old lube or grease that somebody had sc.r.a.ped out there."

"It wasn't lube," Reservoir Hill said, shuddering.

"No?"

"I know lube oil." Reservoir Hill wet his lips. "I've worked in refineries too many years not to know grease or lube. This stuff looks more like-well-" He fell silent.

"Like what?"

Reservoir Hill gave a large shrug.

"Forget it! When they have been in the oil fields as long as I have, they sometimes got funny!"

The two of them walked toward the drilling rig. It was a complete outfit, even more modern on close examination. Everything was in readiness for the striking of oil, catch dams have been thrown across gullies with fresnos.

It was a steam rig, and the boiler was located far enough away that a possible unexpected outpouring of natural gas from the well would not be likely to reach the boiler fires before they could be extinguished by a supply of water which was kept close at hand. Steam was brought from the boiler to the machinery at the well by pipe.

And oil field scouts, fellows who know their business, would have said that here was a wildcat drilling outfitwhich knew what it was doing.

Hill stopped, inhaled until his chest was almost half as big as his stomach, and blasted a yell.

"Sam!" he howled. "Sam! Where are you?"

Echoes came gobbling back from the red oak carpeted hills.

"Tsk! Tsk!"

the girl clucked. "You must think Sam's over by Ponca City or somewhere!"

They waited. Night breeze seemed to have suddenly stopped rustling the red oak leaves, but it might have been a freak of the night.

Reservoir Hill growled, "Well! Didn't answer, did he?"

The girl had become concerned.

"Sam can't be asleep! Your yell must have made half the Indian warriors in the Osage sit up in their graves!"

They ran forward, guns ready. The man, Reservoir Hill, produced a big, s.h.i.+ny flashlight which gave poor light and not much of it. The light immediately found s.h.i.+ny substance on the ground.

Reservoir Hill stared. His throat made a rasping noise more eloquent than any other sound could have been.

"Them's Sam's clothes, ain't they?" he croaked.

THE male clothing-hat, s.h.i.+rt, coat, trousers, socks, heavy oil field shoes-lay exactly in a position they would occupy if the former wearer had lain down on his back and his body had become nonexistent.

The s.h.i.+rt was inside the coat, with the s.h.i.+rt sleeves down inside the coat sleeves in a natural manner. The socks were even inside the shoes.

"Ah-h-h!"

Reservoir Hill growled. He sounded as if trying to bolster his own courage.

The girl eyed him curiously. "Why are you scared? This is a practical joke! It's too silly to be anything else!"

"Humph!" Reservoir Hill, to avoid the question, walked forward with his flashlight.

He took only a few paces before he wrenched to a rigid halt. His throat made its queer noise.

The girl ran forward, stood at his side and stared at what he had found.

"Some one had dumped more of that queer-looking grease," she said.

Reservoir Hill wet his lips. "Listen! Our boss driller disappeared! We can't find him anywhere! But we find this gummy stuff!"

"I still say it's grease!'

"I haven't been working with crude oil and things for nothing, all my life," growled Reservoir Hill. "And I know this ain't grease!"

"What is it then?"

"Ain't quite ready to say what I think it is!" Reservoir Hill mumbled.

"Why not?"

"Don't like to scare women when there maybe ain't no need!""I was brought up on Indian ma.s.sacre stories," the girl said, dryly. She was calm enough to make it seem as if she had been, too.

Reservoir Hill skulked forward. Silhouetted against the glare of his own flashlight beam, he was like a caricature of an old Indian fighter on the trail of a hostile redskin. He threw his light over toward the derrick.

He lifted his .30-30 and flame and noise came out of its muzzle.

The girl ran forward. "What is it?"

"Going into the well casing!" Reservoir Hill shrieked. "Throw my flashlight on the durn thing!"

The girl grabbed his flashlight, pointed its poor light in the direction of the derrick floor and the drilling casing which stuck upward in the center. The light was extremely weak.

"Battery about gone!" she complained. "I can't see-!"

Then she saw. Maybe she had been brought up on tales of Indian ma.s.sacres, but the scream she poured out now would have done justice to the most easily frightened maid.

THE thing going into the oil well casing had substantial reality to it, that was certain. It was not transparent, like a jelly. It flowed as some jellies will melt and flow when dropped on a hot stove. It was going into the sixteen-inch casing.

Color of the flowing ma.s.s was red.

"Whatever it is, we'll stop it!" The girl's shotgun banged hugely, banged again. Louder than the .30-30, it did not have as ugly a sound.

But the translucent red ma.s.s disappeared down the casing.

The girl and Reservoir Hill dashed forward, weapons ready. There was no sign of the red ma.s.s on the derrick floor.

Reservoir Hill touched the steel casing pipe. He wrenched his hand back, leaped to one side, grabbed up a fistful of waste and scrubbed his palm furiously.

"There's gooey stuff on the casing!" he howled.

The girl looked closely. The "gooey stuff" was there. She did not touch it.

There were other marks on the casing. s.h.i.+ny streaks left by lead! Big streaks made by the .30-30 slugs, and small ones where the shotgun slugs had hit.

The girl said, hoa.r.s.ely, "Our bullets. .h.i.t everywhere!"

"Hah!" Reservoir Hill took the flashlight out of her hand, and turned it on the derrick floor. "Look! A trail of the gooey stuff!"

The girl said, "Let's follow it."

They followed it to the mysterious, shapeless ma.s.s they had found on the ground-the stuff that looked like grease, and yet didn't.

Then the smeared path continued on to the clothes lying on the ground.

"It goes right to Sam Sand's duds!" Reservoir Hill dropped to a knee, explored briefly, then gulped, "Vida!"

"What?" asked the girl."The gooey stuff is all over Sam's clothes!"

There was rustling of leaves and crackling of dry twigs in the red oak thicket near by. This sound proved to be made by two men, who soon galloped up.

Reservoir Hill used his weak flashlight to identify the newcomers.

"Ah-h-h!"

he grunted. "Andershott and Cugg! Practically n.o.body!"

Chapter II. THE MAN NEEDED.